


For Ever After

by LadySlytherin



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-02
Updated: 2013-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-03 07:17:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1067615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySlytherin/pseuds/LadySlytherin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Psychology wasn't Natasha's strong suit, but she knew enough to guess how it would end...</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Ever After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Barbayat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barbayat/gifts).



Anyone with an understanding of psychology would have seen it coming. They’d have _known_ how it was going to end, at least in a generalized manner if not the specifics of the whole thing. Natasha Romanov didn’t consider herself to be an expert in psychology; not by any stretch of the imagination. But understanding how someone’s mind worked was all a part of her training; her special skill set. So she had seen it coming. And there were times when she’d considered stopping it, or at least trying to. Talking to the men...explaining what was happening and how dangerous it was...trying to reach a resolution before it all crashed down around them, hurting god-only-knew how many of them in the process. But Natasha was trained to keep herself set apart from groups and not even joining the Avengers could completely change that instinct.

So instead of stepping in, she _watched_.

She watched, from start to finish.

Tony’s relationship with Pepper hadn’t lasted as long as one would think it might have, considering how well Pepper knew - and seemed to understand - Tony. But then, maybe that was why it didn’t last very long. It wasn’t as though Pepper could delude herself about it for very long. She knew precisely how Tony Stark operated, after all.

In truth, it lasted through lipstick stains on Tony’s collar, and his clothes smelling like strange perfume. It lasted through drunken fights and Tony not being sober more than two days in any given week. It lasted through Tony submerging himself in his work; burying himself in his lab and refusing to see her because she _‘disrupted his focus’’_. It survived the times he recklessly endangered himself in his Ironman suit, fighting beside the other Avengers.

What it _didn’t_ make it through was the day the papers ran side-by-side photos of Tony Stark. On one side was a picture of Tony and Pepper, all dressed up for a charity function, the smiling couple. On the other was Tony, sandwiched between a set of barely-legal twins - one male, one female - in a state of intimate disarray. The way Natasha saw it, there was a lot that Pepper would forgive Tony for. Publicly humiliating her with scandal and infidelity, however, fell firmly under the _‘not forgivable’_ heading.

Not that Tony seemed overly upset over losing Pepper. In truth, it was almost as though they had both expected it to happen. Like they were going along, placidly waiting for the day when things were going to be over between them. And expecting it, it was hard to get overly upset about it. They were both just resigned to the inevitable outcome.

The day Tony was swept into Steve Roger’s arms didn’t really surprise Natasha much, either. Steve had a thing about saving people, after all. She figured it came from when he was younger and too weak to even save himself. He was still trying to make up for that, all these years later. And if there was ever a man in need of saving, it was Tony Stark.

So Steve struggled to rein Tony in, and Tony continued to self-destruct.

It was hard to watch, and impossible to look away.

Steve would bring Tony food when he was locked in his lab for days on end. He poured out all of Tony’s booze, then he went around to various liquor stores to ensure they wouldn’t sell to Tony. He doted on the other man, lavishing him with affection and love and the occasional talking-to when he needed it. Steve was driven and passionate and desperately devoted to Tony.

Not that Tony seemed to notice.

He insisted someone like Steve couldn’t possibly love him; couldn’t possibly be happy with him. He drank whenever he could get his hands on something alcoholic, and he worked until he was too exhausted to do more than drop where he stood. He refused to eat or sleep when working on projects, and shoved Steve away from him. Not just emotionally, but physically. He rebuffed every attempt of Steve’s to be in a committed, adult relationship. But, for whatever reason, he couldn’t resist falling into bed with Steve.

When Tony cheated - as anyone who knew him could have guessed he would - there was no fight. Steve just shook his head, voiced his disappointment, and refused to have sex with Tony for a week. When it happened a second time, Steve tried a different tact and spent the next week fucking Tony until he was too weak to even _think_ about being with someone else. From then on, anytime Tony so much as gave an admiring look to someone other than Steve, the super-soldier responded by ensuring Tony was too well-loved to even consider acting on whatever thoughts he might have had. it worked better than anyone could have predicted, and you had to grudgingly respect Steve for thinking of it. The serum that gave him the stamina to follow through was a big plus, too.

When she realized it was working, Natasha foolishly thought, for just a moment, that Steve had solved the problem. That he had finally managed to control Tony and maybe things would be okay. She should have factored in Tony’s stubbornness and determination. If Tony Stark wanted to self-destruct, no one - not even Captain America - was going to stop him.

Tony might have been unable to cheat, and his drinking might have been severely curtailed, but there were plenty of ways to ruin yourself if you _really_ tried.

And Tony never did _anything_ by half-measure.

The first time Tony was hurt in battle because he was being reckless and careless and _stupid_ , Steve screamed at him the whole time he was being tended. The second time it happened, Steve didn’t stop screaming until two days later. The third time it happened, Steve screamed for an entire week.

It didn’t matter.

Tony didn’t care how angry Steve was about it. He didn’t seem to care about much of anything. He walked around with a desolate sort of look in his eyes and seemed to be doing his damndest to get himself killed. It was after that third injury that Natasha fully understood just how it was going to end. She could see it in Tony’s eyes, whenever he looked at Steve. And it was then that she first considered interceding. She just wasn’t sure it was the best idea to get involved in something that was already so...tangled.

She wasn’t even sure saying something would have helped.

Tony was so determined. He wasn’t going to back down; not on this. Natasha silently grieved for the little boy Tony had once been: bright-eyed and brilliant and with _so much_ potential. She imagined Howard Stark must have been terribly cold to his son to have so-crushed Tony’s spirit. Someone who didn’t know better would think Tony was arrogant, but that was as far from the truth as it was possible to get. Tony was harder on himself than anyone; he berated himself constantly. He pushed himself and pushed himself, harder and harder, not caring if it killed him so long as he accomplished something in the process. And the only reason to push yourself to the point of breaking and then right on past it was if you felt like nothing you’d done so far was worth anything. So you had to do _more_

It was the same reason why Steve couldn’t stop trying to save Tony.

Steve was, beyond all else, _a good man_. He would give himself over to a cause with all of his heart and soul if it was something he believed in; something he thought was worth fighting for. In this case, that was Tony’s well-being. Natasha wasn’t sure if anything else had ever mattered more to Steve. He was bound and determined to save the brilliant engineer no matter what. The trouble with saving is, it only works if the person you’re trying to help _wants_ to be saved. That was a lesson Steve had never understood, but one Natasha knew all too well.

You couldn’t save someone who was hell-bent on destroying themselves. Not unless you watched them every single second of the day. Because the second you turned your back, or even so much as blinked, they’d go right back to it. Which was, of course, precisely what Tony did.

When it happened, it was so subtle...such a little, tiny thing...no one could have anticipated it. In truth, it happened so strangely; the opposite of how it _should_ have happened. All of the times Tony had been careless...all of the ways it could have gone down...it should _never_ have happened like it did. And yet, maybe it was the only way it _could_ have happened.

Steve was shaking someone’s hand at a charity event, schmoozing away as all of the Avengers had had to do at various points. He turned back just as Tony started to raise a glass to his lips. Steve wasn’t sure who’d given his lover the alcohol, but he was sorely tempted to find out and punch them through a wall. Without hesitation, Steve snatched the glass away, glaring. Tony was defiant; belligerent. But they were in public, and that meant a real fight couldn’t happen. If they had been at home, Steve would have poured the glass of bourbon down the drain. Possibly he would have followed that by throwing the glass against the wall, shattering it, before launching into a raging tirade about how Tony might not care about his own health, but Steve sure as hell did and he wasn’t going to watch as his lover drank himself to death. But they weren’t at home, and there was no convenient sink nearby, and Tony was looking like he might try to take the glass back, Steve’s temper be damned.

So Steve, determined to save Tony from himself, downed the contents of the crystal tumbler.

Tony was still cursing Steve in a heated whisper - insisting he was a grown man who could damned-well have a drink when he wanted one - when the super-soldier collapsed to the floor.

There were so many things Steve’s body could handle; so much it could take and keep on fighting. The dose of poison someone had slipped into Tony’s drink would have killed him in a matter of seconds, but Steve...well, Steve wasn’t quite as easy to kill.

When Steve finally woke up in the hospital two days later, he was more surprised than he should have been to find Tony curled up in a horribly-uncomfortable hospital chair beside his bed, looking a bit like death warmed over. His hair was sticking up in slightly-grease clumps, in a manner that let Steve know right away that Tony had been fisting his hands in it in anguished worry. His face was pale and unshaven; his clothes were a rumpled tuxedo that looked like he’d slept in it. Which, of course, he _had_. His eyes were miserable and hollow and ringed by the dark purple marks of the severely sleep deprived, like a badge of honor. His eyes were also red-rimmed and puffy, and his cheeks showed faint silvery trails in the fluorescent lighting, betraying the tears he couldn’t seem to stop from falling. 

When he noticed Steve was awake, Tony began to cry again. Without thought or care, Tony threw himself onto the bed - and into Steve’s arms - sobbing and begging forgiveness. For the first time that Steve could remember, Tony made _promises_. He swore to be faithful, to be sober, to be careful; he swore to love Steve for the rest of his life, no matter what fights might happen or what they might disagree on. He apologized for taking the drink he’d been offered; for every drink before that; for every time he’d cheated. He apologized for endangering himself; for taking needless risks and being selfish enough to not see how badly his death would have hurt Steve.

Because until the moment he’d thought Steve was going to die, he’d never thought about how those he left behind might feel. He’d had to be in that position himself to realize just how awful it was. But now...now he knew. He did. He knew, and he understood, and he would _never_ do that to Steve again. Not ever. Dying was easy; being left behind was _horrible_. He peppered kisses over Steve’s face, swearing to never again hurt the man he loved.

When Steve finally turned his head a little and caught Tony’s lips with his own, the kiss was salty from Tony’s tears and bittersweet with regrets and recriminations. But it held forgiveness as well. Forgiveness for everything, on both sides. For every fight. For every mistake. For all of the things that might have happened, if this hadn’t.

Because how could Steve stay angry when he’d been given the only thing he’d ever asked for? He had just wanted Tony to acknowledge his own value; to understand that it would kill Steve if something happened to him. And now, Tony got it. True, it had taken Steve nearly dying to get him there, but Steve wasn’t about to quibble over the methodology of the whole thing. _How_ they’d gotten there was no where near as important to Steve as the fact that they _had_ gotten there.

As to Tony...he was determined to keep his promises. Every single one.

And Natasha...well. She’d always known it would take one of them nearly dying to sort things out. She’d just assumed it would be Tony laid up in the hospital. She figured he’d straighten up once he saw what a wreck Steve was. She hadn’t imagined it would be _Tony_ who was destroyed, by the potential loss of Steve or by anything else. She figured it was a good thing she hadn’t tried to interfere; things had worked out all on their own, as they usually did.

As long as everyone was happy in the end...that was all that mattered.

_**~ The End ~ ** _


End file.
